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Starting from Stretch, the required firmware are packaged in Debian (atheros-firmware). Alternatively nvm_usb_00000200.bin and rampatch_usb_00000200.bin can be downloaded from https://github.com/wkennington/linux-firmware/tree/master/qca and should be installed in /lib/firmware/qca. Starting from Stretch, the required firmware are packaged in Debian (firmware-atheros). Alternatively nvm_usb_00000200.bin and rampatch_usb_00000200.bin can be downloaded from https://github.com/wkennington/linux-firmware/tree/master/qca and should be installed in /lib/firmware/qca.

Translation(s): none

Installing Debian Linux Testing (Stretch) on MSI GS60

Models covered
MSI GS60

Sub-model options : MSI GS60 Ghost Pro-066
- Intel Core i7 4710HQ (2.50GHz) - Video card: NVIDIA ?GeForce GTX 970M 6GB
- Screen size: 15.6" 1920x1080
- Wireless card: Killer N1525 Combo (2 x 2 ac)
- Disk and Ram size, optical device: 16GB Memory 1TB HDD 256 GB (128 GB M.2SATA x 2 RAID 0) SSD
- Other options, like fingerprint reader, bluetooth...

Sub-model options : MSI GS60 Ghost 2QC-028it
- Intel Core i7 4720HQ (2.60GHz) - Video card: NVIDIA ?GeForce GTX 960M 2GB
- Screen size: 15.6" 1920x1080
- Wireless card: Killer N1525 Combo (2 x 2 ac)
- Disk and Ram size, optical device: 16GB Memory 1TB HDD 128 GB (128 GB M.2SATA) SSD
- Other options, like fingerprint reader, bluetooth...

Overall Status

Core Components

[ATTACH]

Boot Standard Kernel:

{OK}

LAN network card:

{OK}

Detect CD/DVD:

[-]

Detect hard drives:

{i}

Extra Features

CPU Frequency Scaling

[?]

Hibernation

[?]

Sleep / Suspend

[?]

Xorg

{OK}

- OpenGL

{OK}

- Resize-and-Rotate(randr)

{OK}

- Intel/Nvidia(bumblebee)

{OK} X-(

Switch to External Screen

{OK}

Mouse

- Built-in (Trackpoint)

{OK}

- Built-in (Touchpad)

[?]

Modem

[-]

Wireless/Wifi

{OK} X-( in Stretch

Bluetooth

{i} X-(

SD Card Reader

{OK}

Keyboard's Hotkeys

{OK}

- Keyboard backlight

{OK}

- Keyboard colors

{OK}

Webcam

{OK}

Legend :
{OK} = OK ; {X} Unsupported(No Driver) ; /!\ = Error (Couldn't get it working); [?] Unknown, Not Test ; [-] Not-applicable
{i} = Configuration Required; X-( = Only works with a non-free driver and or firmware

Important Notes

Bios

You have turn off secure boot in the BIOS. Otherwise the PXE loader will complain about that the boot image is not signed: "Invalid signature detected check secure boot policy in setup". The only keys it recognizes are from Microsoft.

It is also better if you also disable fast boot option and any other Microsoft Windows specific feature, or you will likely end in a corrupted system if you use both OSes.

Boot the installer

The laptop doesn't have a CD drive, but boots fine from USB sticks. PXE has also been successfully tried on Jessie.

Special instructions for PXE

This information should be updated, as it refers to Jessie.

The default image for Debian netboot only works on older BIOSes and isn't right format for new UEFI systems. So, replace pxelinux.0 with the AMD 64 efi image: debian-installer/amd64/bootnetx64.efi

PXE has been tested with an Ubuntu system running tftpd-hpa to serve the boot image, and a router running DD-WRT to configure dhcp for PXE. The rest of the netboot install worked according to the documentation.

SSD Setup

This information should be updated, as it refers to Jessie.

The laptop may have up to two SSDs and may come with RAID0 set up in the BIOS so they appear as one drive. However, grub doesn't support booting a RAID0 device, according to some posts. It was possible to mount the disks and configure the partitions etc. from the installer, but grub would refuse to install with an error like, "disk mduuidxxxxxxxx not found".

Ethernet

The driver in testing works fine during install. Jessie should also have no problem.

Configuration

Display

Backlight

The ACPI interface to set the backlight of the panel works out-of-the-box, but there is no function key associated to this feature, so it is not very convenient for the end user.

Bumblebee

This laptop usually ships two video cards, an Intel one (MSI GS60 2QC includes an HD Graphics 4600) and an Nvidia one (MSI GS60 2QC includes a GTX 960M). It is possible to selectively use these two cards for specific applications using bumblebee. Installing proprietary nvidia drivers and bumblebee packages, enables this feature out-of-the-box.

Audio

Audio works out-of-the-box, however the first alsa card is the HDMI port, which is rather annoying.

echo "options snd-hda-intel index=1,0 vid=0x1462,0x1462 pid=0x1102,0x114a" > /etc/modprobe.d/0000-local.conf

inverts the order of the cards, so that the soundcard is the first device.

Modem

  • (not covered yet)

Power Management

  • (not covered yet)

WiFi

Support for Killer N1525 Combo card has been added in Linux kernel 4.2 and requires firmware-atheros non-free package. It works out-of-the-box in Stretch.

Bluetooth

Bluetooth is integrated in the Killer N1525 Combo WiFi card, but does not work out of the box. To make it work it is necessary to patch the Kernel and manually download non-free firmware. The main issue with this card is that the bluetooth shares the same USB identifier with an older bluetooth card by the same producer, so the chipset (QCA Rome) is not correctly identified as reported in https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=99371 . Unfortunately the currently proposed patch will make the older cards stop working and thus cannot be accepted in the official kernel.

Starting from Stretch, the required firmware are packaged in Debian (firmware-atheros). Alternatively nvm_usb_00000200.bin and rampatch_usb_00000200.bin can be downloaded from https://github.com/wkennington/linux-firmware/tree/master/qca and should be installed in /lib/firmware/qca.

I have tested scanning for devices, pairing with mobile phone and using bluetooth headset (using pulseaudio). Everything seems to work fine, except the microphone that has not been recognized.

Webcam

The webcam is an USB Acer BisonCAM, working out-of-the-box with uvcvideo module.

Keyboard

MSI GS60 2QC ships a steelseries keyboard. The keyboard has backlight, that works out-of-the-box (relevant functions keys works out-of-the-box as well). It also has the additional feature that it is possible to change the color and brightness of the keyboard. This is not directly supported in Debian yet, but https://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/collab-maint/msi-keyboard.git contains the source of a command line application that can be used to adjust brightness and colors of the keyboard.

Mouse

The laptop includes a multitouch Synaptics trackpad. It is possible to use synclient to configure it.


System Summary

lspci

00:00.0 Host bridge [0600]: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200 v3/4th Gen Core Processor DRAM Controller [8086:0c04] (rev 06)
00:01.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200 v3/4th Gen Core Processor PCI Express x16 Controller [8086:0c01] (rev 06)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation 4th Gen Core Processor Integrated Graphics Controller [8086:0416] (rev 06)
00:03.0 Audio device [0403]: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200 v3/4th Gen Core Processor HD Audio Controller [8086:0c0c] (rev 06)
00:14.0 USB controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family USB xHCI [8086:8c31] (rev 05)
00:16.0 Communication controller [0780]: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family MEI Controller #1 [8086:8c3a] (rev 04)
00:1a.0 USB controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family USB EHCI #2 [8086:8c2d] (rev 05)
00:1b.0 Audio device [0403]: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset High Definition Audio Controller [8086:8c20] (rev 05)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port #1 [8086:8c10] (rev d5)
00:1c.2 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port #3 [8086:8c14] (rev d5)
00:1c.3 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port #4 [8086:8c16] (rev d5)
00:1c.4 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port #5 [8086:8c18] (rev d5)
00:1d.0 USB controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family USB EHCI #1 [8086:8c26] (rev 05)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge [0601]: Intel Corporation HM87 Express LPC Controller [8086:8c4b] (rev 05)
00:1f.2 RAID bus controller [0104]: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile SATA Controller [RAID mode] [8086:282a] (rev 05)
00:1f.3 SMBus [0c05]: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family SMBus Controller [8086:8c22] (rev 05)
01:00.0 3D controller [0302]: NVIDIA Corporation Device [10de:13d8] (rev a1)
04:00.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Qualcomm Atheros Killer E220x Gigabit Ethernet Controller [1969:e091] (rev 13)
05:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Qualcomm Atheros Device [168c:003e] (rev 20)

lsusb

lsusb -v | grep -E '\<(Bus|iProduct|bDeviceClass|bDeviceProtocol)' 2>/dev/null

Bus 004 Device 005: ID 1770:ff00  
  bDeviceClass            0 (Defined at Interface level)
  bDeviceProtocol         0 
  iProduct                1 MSI EPF USB
      (Bus Powered)
  (Bus Powered)
Bus 004 Device 002: ID 8087:8000 Intel Corp. 
  bDeviceClass            9 Hub
  bDeviceProtocol         1 Single TT
  iProduct                0 
  bDeviceClass            9 Hub
  bDeviceProtocol         0 Full speed (or root) hub
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
  bDeviceClass            9 Hub
  bDeviceProtocol         0 Full speed (or root) hub
  iProduct                2 EHCI Host Controller
Bus 003 Device 003: ID 0cf3:3004 Atheros Communications, Inc. 
  bDeviceClass          224 Wireless
  bDeviceProtocol         1 Bluetooth
  iProduct                0 
Bus 003 Device 002: ID 8087:8008 Intel Corp. 
  bDeviceClass            9 Hub
  bDeviceProtocol         1 Single TT
  iProduct                0 
  bDeviceClass            9 Hub
  bDeviceProtocol         0 Full speed (or root) hub
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
  bDeviceClass            9 Hub
  bDeviceProtocol         0 Full speed (or root) hub
  iProduct                2 EHCI Host Controller
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
  bDeviceClass            9 Hub
  bDeviceProtocol         3 
  iProduct                2 xHCI Host Controller
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 046d:c05a Logitech, Inc. M90/M100 Optical Mouse
  bDeviceClass            0 (Defined at Interface level)
  bDeviceProtocol         0 
  iProduct                2 USB Optical Mouse
      (Bus Powered)
  (Bus Powered)
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
  bDeviceClass            9 Hub
  bDeviceProtocol         1 Single TT
  iProduct                2 xHCI Host Controller

USB Host controllers entries (without OHCI, UHCI, EHCI) are removed too.

Resources

Attachments

Some configuration files and sample outputs.

Credits

Sarah Fortune (me@sjf.io) Giulio Paci


CategoryLaptopComputer